Hajja Salesjana October - December 2018

9 Catholic Tradition and its Mixed Vision of Children The separate conclusions reached by Luigi Borriello, Phillippe Ares and Adrian Gellel in particular suggest that, over centuries of church tradition, Jesus’ intuitions on the children’s ability to become saints seem to have been generally overlooked or put aside. Similar to Borriello, Gellel claims that over the centuries: There seems to have been a perplexity with regard to the capability for younger members of the Church to live to the full the perfection of Christian life. [Adrian Gellel, “Saintly Children: Roman Catholicism and the Nurture of Children,” in Nurturing Child, 87.] In line with this, Phillippe Ares also asserts that for centuries within the Catholic tradition children were perceived as little adults or adults in the making. [cf. Philippe Ares, Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life, trans., R. Baldick (New York: Vintage, 1962).] For many years debate persisted within Catholic circles between two opposing groups with two conflicting beliefs. One group considered children incapable of living in fullness the Gospel. The opposing group maintained that sanctity and the heroic imitation of Christ is possible in every stage of life, even in childhood. Notably, in line with the thought of the latter group is the document De servorum Dei beatificatione proposed in 1738 by Cardinal Prospero Lambertini who at the time was the secretary of the congregation of rites. A few decades prior to Don Bosco’s birth, Cardinal Lambertini (later on Pope Benedict XIV, 1740- 1758) through this document explains that for a virtue to be considered difficult for a ten-year- old child it should be an act considered above the ordinary strength of children of his or her age. Hence, the heroic virtue in children should be judged in relation to the common strength of virtuous children of the same age. In the same way, while grown-ups may be morally very small by reason of their virtues, little children could equally be very mature. Although these views were proposed by Cardinal Lambertini prior to his Papal election, the document suggests an openness within the Catholic Church to the idea of child holiness before Don Bosco’s lifetime. While there is no indication that Don Bosco knew of Lambertini’s writings, one cannot help notice a similarity of ideas. Don Bosco’s wisdom in offering variant paths to holiness which were adaptable to the particular age of each and every youth are reminiscent of the views recommended in the document presented by Pope Benedict. Notwithstanding Pope Benedict’s document, Borriello and Gellel both speak of a narrow Catholic outlook of the child as an “adult in the making” which persisted even during Don Bosco’s time. Adrian Gellel states that: Unfortunately, although there is such rich theological basis to support the notion of children spirituality, it is only in comparatively recent times that the Church has started to discover the spiritual potential of children. [Gellel, “Saintly Children: Roman Catholicism and the Nurture of Children,” 84.] The motive behind this apparent narrow outlook, according to Borriello, seemed to be due to a lack of understanding of the psychological and moral maturity of children and adolescents.